Archive for the ‘Ford Model A air compressor’ tag

The best part about Hershey, in my opinion, is the swap meet. Sure, the show brings out some vehicles you’ve never imagined seeing, and plenty of vehicles change hands in the car corral, but the swap meet is the real pulse of the hobby, where you see everything and anything, and where you get exposed to the multiple personalities and flavors of old car nuts.

Take, for instance, the 1959 Thunderbird with matching Thunderbird-bodied go-kart and 1/18th-scale Thunderbird above, all in matching paint. Just needed a Matchbox Thunderbird to go with it. Not sure if the $30,000 price tag in the window included all three, though.

Speaking of go-karts, spotted the Corvette body for a Chevrolet promotional kart (akin to the Rupp Chevy Jr.) in the Red Field sporting a little damage to the fiberglass body. I think we ran across the homebuilt Jeep in the Chocolate Field; it was sporting a $550 price tag.

Not exactly a go-kart, this three-wheeled 1933 Custer Car served double duty as transportation and as rolling merchandise. It sounded like it had a little single-cylinder gas engine under the louvered back panel.

Automobilia fans had plenty of neat, one-of-a-kind stuff to choose from as well. The Willys-Knight-logoed blocks, likely removed from an old dealership, carried a price tag of $350. The display of Connecticut license plates, all of the same number, was neat, but we suspect Connecticut allows (or, at least, allowed) the same person or family to use the same plate number year after year – license plate aficionados, can you confirm? As far as the bus, according to the seller, it came from the GM Styling studios, dates to the 1980s or so, and includes a full interior as well as metal frame and suspension. The seller was asking $3,500 for it.

One piece of automobilia I very nearly came home with was this printing plate for a Budd publication touting its experience manufacturing components for the automotive industry. I flipped it to make it a little easier to read. I probably shouldn’t have passed on it: For $200, when and where will I see another one?

Oh, yeah, and parts. Didn’t see a price tag for the home-dropped Model T axle. The head used to convert a Model A engine into an air compressor – similar to the Schramm we spotted years ago – was interesting. And we had no clue on the mystery piece – possibly a rocker arm cover for one of the many overhead-valve conversions for the Model A four-cylinder?

Finally, at the end of a long day of walking the rows and the fields, we sympathized with this guy.